Mr Blackhall was delivering his keynote address at the recent AADA Convention and Expo in Brisbane when he called for caution in the pursuit of battery electric vehicles by governments and regulators and questioned the true credentials of BEVs as a tool for reducing CO2.

He said that data on the amounts of CO2 generated by vehicles over their entire lifetime, from cradle to grave, showed that hybrids were in fact more CO2 friendly to the planet than plug-in battery electric vehicles.  

“Plug-in battery electric vehicles are the subject on everyone’s mind.  So I want to chart (data), that shows that I think not everybody understands that plug-in battery electric vehicles are not necessarily the answer to CO2, depending on the way you measure CO2.”

David Blackhall

Mr Blackhall, using data sourced from Dr Graham Conway from the Texas-based Southwest Research Institute, an R&D consulting firm to governments and private industry, said that taking into account the sourcing of raw materials, manufacture and life of the vehicle based on 180,000 miles before disposal, BEVs were not as green as may people think.

“If you take all of the carbon that that car generates, in manufacturing, batteries and in using electricity, then clearly the winner on this data is not a plug-in full battery electric vehicle. It’s not and certainly for our country it isn’t. 

“The winner actually is a hybrid vehicle.

“So given the mix of our electricity grid, and given the legacy we’ve got of coal and gas-fired electricity, and given the fact that we’re not Norway or Sweden, we haven’t got nuclear, we haven’t got hydro; what makes sense? Hybrids make sense. 

“I am not saying battery plug-in electric vehicles are bad. I’m just saying, we’re rushing down a rabbit hole here, without stopping to think about where it might get us. And it needs massive cooperation and investment from the government and others to even start to attack the grid in a meaningful way,” Mr Blackhall added.

By John Mellor